“You’re welcome. Come see me if you have any questions.”
I pushed through the office and into the streaming hallway in search of my first class. The school was big, but I knew better than to ask for directions. I remembered too many times when I sent a new kid to the wrong side of the building at my old school.
I found my trig class. A couple of girls were already in the room. I sat in the back row. Only people who liked attention sat in front.
Kids trickled in. Like radar, their eyes snapped to mine. They didn’t smile. I knew the look. New kid. I slouched a bit more in my seat.
The teacher showed up. He was short and narrow, like a miniature man in a suit. He didn’t take attendance, just wrote some problems on the board. It was like I figured—I already knew the stuff. I’d ace the class, no problem.
As the rest of the students opened their texts, the teacher came down the aisle toward me.
“I have an extra.” He handed me a workbook. “I understand you’re transferring from a private school.”
“That’s right.”
“What are your thoughts so far?”
I looked around at all the kids pretending not to listen, and then quoted the lady in the office. “Like anywhere else. Everyone complains about their schedule.”
“Well, we’re a young school. Got to learn to stand before we can march. But we have a good student body. We don’t allow troublemakers.”
I thought of the three gorillas in the parking lot.
“I don’t know why you were asked to leave your last school.”
I started to protest, but he held up his hand.
“And I don’t want to know. I believe people deserve a second chance. It’s the third chance I have a problem with.” With a smile that looked vaguely threatening, he walked away.
I sat, stunned. He thought my school kicked me out. Probably all the teachers thought that, talking about me behind my back. I opened my workbook with more force than necessary. Nearby students stared.
This was going to be a long day.
I had trouble finding my second class, World History, and got there just as the door closed. I stepped inside the crowded room. My stomach flipped.
Brittany was there, all eyeliner and lipstick, just as I imagined her. She was talking to the girl beside her, laughing, making me feel small and insignificant as I stood there.
“Thank you for joining us, Mister Forester,” said the teacher. “There’s a seat for you by the window.”
“Yes ma’am.”
As I made my way to the back of the room, Brittany glanced up. She smiled at me. It was enough to blot out whatever the teacher said for the rest of the period.
When the class ended, I hurried forward, but Brittany didn’t hang around. I stepped into the hall and watched the back of her miniskirt sway as she dodged the growing crowd.
Third hour was gym. The three gorillas were there. I should have expected them. PE was probably their best class. They sneered at me, but I ignored them.
The teacher wore shorts and trailed an odor of BO. Everyone called him Coach. After taking attendance, he ushered us outside for some exercise. We staggered in single file. Some of the kids had dressed out, but others wore street clothes so I didn’t feel too conspicuous. I followed the class onto a track surrounding the football field, careful to avoid my three friends.
“Take a lap,” the coach ordered. “No screwing around.”
I started at a trot, but soon found myself running. It felt good to stretch my legs after being cooped up inside. I thought about Brittany and the way she smiled when she saw me. She recognized me. I knew I made an impression that day in Video Stop. Wish I hadn’t knocked over Darth Vader, though. I winced, remembering, and then pushed the thought away.
That didn’t matter. She was here. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her in class. I wondered if there was a way to switch seats with the girl sitting beside her. Maybe I should play dumb and ask for her help with my homework. Maybe I should ask her out. I ran faster, thinking of where I might take her. The Coffee Café? Nah, she’d want to go somewhere dressier than that. The Olive Garden.
Suddenly Coach stepped before me. “Hold on, boy. Pull it in here.”
I slowed and circled around to stand beside him. I was panting, but not hard.
“Have you ever considered trying out for the football team?” he asked, eyes wide. “You’d make one heck of a wide receiver.”
I looked across the field, unable to believe I’d left the rest of the class halfway down the track.
SIX
The next morning when my uncle dropped me in front of the school, two guys approached. They had buzz cuts and button-down shirts.
The taller of the two wore glasses. “Hey,” he said. “I’m Maxwell.”
“Lonnie,” said the other.
They seemed nervous. Their eyes shifted like they were goading each other to talk to me.
I looked at them. “I’m Cody.”
“Yeah,” Maxwell said as if agreeing with me. “New, eh?”
The kid had a knack for the obvious. Before I could ask where this was leading, the other kid spoke.
“Is it true you outran Ephraim Higgins on the track yesterday?”
I screwed up my face. “Who?”
“Two things,” Maxwell said. “Eff is kind of a good ole boy, born and raised in Florida. Him and his family still think the South will rise again. They hate New Yorkers.”
“I’m from Massachusetts.”
“Same difference, man,” said Lonnie.
“Point number two,” Maxwell counted on his fingers. “Eff don’t like to be shown up. I mean, he’s the freaking star of the football team. Twenty-seven receptions. He rules the school. Everybody loves him.”
I got it. Ephraim Higgins. One of the gorillas I met yesterday. “And I drew attention to myself.”
“You’re on his list.” Maxwell nodded. “At first he kind of blew it off, saying he had a stomach cramp or something.”
“Yeah, but now he says he’s going to break both your legs.” Lonnie bounced on the balls of his feet like the circus was coming to town.
A sour taste filled my mouth. I gazed across the courtyard, expecting to see my doom. “Maybe I better stay out of his way.”
“Maybe,” said Maxwell. “Or maybe you don’t care, with your reputation and all. Maybe old Eff finally met his match.”
Me? I managed a smile. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“No problem,” Maxwell said. “Seeya.”
“Seeya,” Lonnie echoed.
As they walked away, I wondered what their stake was in all this. I guessed they were the kind of people that liked to look at car wrecks.
I spent the rest of the week playing keep away from Ephraim Higgins. It wasn’t easy, especially in PE. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to want to start anything in front of the coach, and the coach was always at my side, working hard to get me to try out for football. I didn’t tell him that if I made the team it meant an instant death sentence for me from his star player. I was polite and non-committal and made sure I didn’t run faster than anyone else.
Looking back, I honestly don’t know how I ran so fast that first day. I was thinking about Brittany, and my feet just took off. I guess I could always run like that, but never had reason to. After all, I was expecting to become a doctor like my parents, and all my classes were geared toward those ends. Most of my friends were planning to be doctors, too.
All week long, Brittany ignored me in World History. It was fast becoming my most hated class. But Friday, just before lunch, she said hi as we passed in the hall. I was so amazed and happy that I nearly walked right into Eff.
Fortunately, something warned me in time. In spite of all the between-period commotion around me, I could hear him as if he stood next to me. I pulled up against the wall.
“What, are you chicken?” he asked an unknown accomplice. “All I need you to do is distract him.”
“I don’t kn
ow, Eff. You’re forgetting the lunch patrol. Can’t we do this off school grounds?”
“I’ll hit him quick. No one’s going to catch us.”
“We could get benched.”
“I’ll bench you if you don’t help me teach this guy a lesson. He can’t diss me.”
It sounded like they were standing in front of the lunchroom. I considered running the other way, but that would just postpone things. Drawing my shoulders back, I rounded the corner to see a group of five burly football players in the hall.
Eff’s face lit with a Christmas-come-early smile. He moved in, lowering his voice. “Hello, new kid.”
“Eff.” I nodded. “Interesting name, Eff. It fits you.”
He blinked as if trying to work that one out. I stepped around him, hoping to reach the haven of the lunch patrol. But a hand grasped my shoulder.
I turned and stood nose-to-nose with Eff. We were the same height, but he was so muscular he outweighed me by about a hundred pounds. I met his eyes, but this time I was more scared than angry, so it didn’t have the same effect. I sensed passersby streaming around us, trying to get out of the way, sensed the other four gorillas move up behind.
A booming voice chortled, “There you all are. I’m happy to see you getting along.”
Eff stepped back, and I looked over as Coach bounded down the hall toward us. “Mister Higgins, I hope you are talking our friend here into trying out for the team,” Coach said. “We certainly could use an extra pair of legs.”
“Yes, sir.” Eff narrowed his eyes at me.
The bell rang. “Where should everyone be?” Coach asked.
“Lunch,” cried one of the thugs, smiling like he got the answer right.
The five football players walked together into the lunchroom.
I stood in the hall, heart racing.
“The way to show him what you’re made of is to meet him on the field,” Coach said. “The only language he speaks is football.”
Anger flared, and my mouth filled with retorts. I didn’t care if Eff knew what I was made of, had no intention of meeting him anywhere, and the last thing I wanted to do was to play football. I clamped hard on my response, but I think he saw it in my eyes. “Excuse me, Coach.”
I stormed off, skipping lunch. I thought of going outside to the courtyard and sitting in the sun. Instead, I went to the office. It was noisy, almost as crowded as before. I looked around for the woman with the reading glasses but couldn’t spot her. Defeated, I sank on a bench. I’d promised Uncle Bob I would stick it out until summer, but I was barely making it through the week. What was I going to do?
“Cody? Is anything wrong?” The woman with the glasses sat beside me. She carried a cup of coffee and a brown paper sack.
“I was wondering if I could change my electives,” I said.
“Did you speak to your counselor?”
“We haven’t been introduced.”
“Oh.” She set her coffee on the floor. “Let’s see. You have PE.”
I groaned. “Yes.”
“They say you’re doing well in that class. Coach Murgott likes you.”
I looked away.
“A little physical activity must be nice. Work out your frustrations. It must be difficult settling in at a new school.”
“Yeah.”
“So PE isn’t the problem. What’s your other elective? Shop?”
“They’re making birdhouses, for crying out loud.” I said it like it was beneath me, but truthfully, I was way behind the other kids.
“I’m sorry, Cody, but we have so many students, once the schedules are set, it’s hard to switch them around. You need a really good reason.” She reached into her sack. “Would you like a tangerine? Home grown.”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
She gave me the fruit, picked up her coffee, and with a fleeting smile walked away. I just sat there and watched the other kids, feeling left out and miserable. As I finished eating, the bell rang, and I went to class without running into any more problems.
It turned out that Maxwell and Lonnie were in my Shop class. I hadn’t noticed them before, kept my head down too much. Besides, they were so nondescript they faded into the walls. They also looked harmless. At that moment, I was all about harmless, so I walked over and sat with them. They seemed pleased.
“We took this class because it’s an easy pass,” Lonnie said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, nobody ever fails Shop. You just have to show up.” Smiling, he gave an exaggerated wink.
I smiled in return, relaxing for the first time that day. We turned to face our birdhouses.
“The roof goes on just like that,” Maxwell said.
Lonnie frowned. “What about that big gap?”
“I’ll just fill it in with putty. It’s what my mom always does when she’s baking a cake.”
“She uses wood putty?”
“Frosting, toe fuzz. And you made that hole too small for a door. The birds will get stuck.”
“Well, it can be a window, then.”
“What?” Maxwell laughed. “What’s a bird need a window for? You going to make little curtains, too?”
Lonnie punched Maxwell in the shoulder, and Maxwell shoved him back. They burst out laughing.
“No rough housing back there,” called the teacher.
“Yes, Mister Conklin,” they said in unison.
“I’ve got an idea,” I whispered to Lonnie. “Why don’t you cut a triangle from the bottom? It’ll look like a keyhole. A door like no other.”
“Nice.” He nodded. “I’ll get extra points for creativity.”
We fell silent for a moment while Lonnie chiseled out the keyhole, Maxwell frosted his roof with putty, and I tried to tongue-and-groove my walls together.
“Guess your uncle must keep you busy,” Maxwell said. “His business is booming.”
“Think so?” I glanced up in surprise. I never thought business was that great.
“Sure. Nobody does anything for themselves anymore.”
“That’s why I suck at this.” Lonnie grimaced at the lopsided hole he’d made in his birdhouse.
“Anyway, if you get some free time tomorrow, you should come to Old Wellington Mall. They have a great arcade. Every Saturday, there’s a Tie Fighter tournament. Lonnie’s won three times in a row.”
“I’m a natural,” Lonnie said.
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “I’ll try to make it.”
Just then, Mr. Conklin gave the ten-minute warning, and we began putting away our supplies. I watched Maxwell and Lonnie from the corner of my eye. Part of me wanted to take them up on their invite, but a larger part warned me to stay away. I wasn’t a normal kid. I didn’t deserve to have friends. That thought led me to Brittany, and I winced as I imagined her screaming at the sight of my wolf.
I stayed away from the mall on Saturday. Uncle Bob had to work, so I spent the weekend with my laptop. I had fifty emails from friends back home, but I didn’t read them. I didn’t have to. They would want to know where I was, why I wasn’t in school. I filtered them all as spam so I wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.
I downloaded a calendar with the phases of the moon and set it as my wallpaper. I also set up a widget for the local news so I would know if there were any more animal attacks. Then I opened the Internet and researched werewolves.
I found out that present-day lycanthropes called themselves therians. They were all over the Web. There were even social networks devoted to therians and otherkins. But I didn’t want to join a community. I wanted to find a way to stop becoming a wolf.
My research went nowhere. I felt anxious and alone. Time was running out. The moon would be full again soon.
SEVEN
A week later in the middle of the night, the change gripped me. I was dreaming something stupid about all the classrooms looking like birdhouses, when for no reason I took a running leap off the roof. I came down in a barrel roll, and when I stood up, I went wolf,
tearing through the woods.
The dream startled me awake. I lay in bed, sweating and shaking, half expecting something with teeth to be in the room with me. My bedroom was dark, but I could see through the shadows as if they weren’t there. Sounds drifted through the open window. There was so much life in Florida. Crickets and field mice, opossum and armadillos. I heard bats flitting through the trees, making a kind of whistling sound. Higher in the open air, a nighthawk circled.
They called to me, tempting me to join them. I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was the night before the full moon. If I climbed out that window, my humanity would be lost to the wolf. So I clutched my Scooby sheet to my chin and waited out the night.
A little after dawn, tires rolled over the gravel driveway. A door slammed, and footsteps came up the side lawn. A figure moved past my window. It was Uncle Bob. He had blood on him. Not drenched in it or anything, but I could smell it. I crawled out of bed, moved to the window, and peered out. He walked to the garbage can behind the shed, stripped off his bloody shirt, and dropped it inside. Then he closed the trashcan liner and dragged it to the curb for pick up.
After that, I heard him on the porch, stomping his boots like he stepped in something nasty. I stumbled into the living room, still pulling up my jeans, and met him as he came through the door. I squelched the urge to ask where he’d been.
“I don’t feel well,” I told him. “I think I’ll call out of school today.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, no. You aren’t getting out of it that easily.”
He walked past me on his way to the kitchen. He had a birthmark in the shape of a backwards C between his shoulder blades. I also noticed three deep scratches on the side of his neck. I smelled his blood. It wasn’t the same scent as the blood on his shirt. I pictured him getting in a bar fight, but that was random. I never knew him to go to a bar.
From the kitchen doorway, I watched him make his customary cup of instant coffee. I wished I could talk to him and tell him why I couldn’t go to school. I wished he could understand. Like that would happen. He’d probably lock me up somewhere. Maybe I’d be better off.
“No, really,” I said. “I’m sick.”
The Amazing Wolf Boy Page 5